Heat forces closure of FEMA office for the day

PEGGY O'HARE, Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle |
September 28, 2005

Thousands lined up at the federal government's Disaster Recovery Center today in southeast Houston seeking aid in the wake of Hurricane Rita's devastation, but the facility closed at 1 p.m. because of the heat with a promise to reopen Thursday morning.

Long lines snaked through parking lots in front of the facility in the 6000 block of the 610 Loop Southeast at temperatures climbed well into the 90s.

A spokeswoman said 2,532 households were registered today. She said that could account for between 3,500-5,000 people. FEMA officials had said the office could handle as many as 5,000 applicants a day.

The office will reopen at 8 a.m. Thursday.

At least 31 people died in Harris County as a result of circumstances surrounding Hurricane Rita, several of them from heat-related illnesses during the mass evacuation before the storm hit, the medical examiner's office announced Tuesday.

More than half of those deaths — 17 of the 31 recorded so far — were of people evacuating to safer ground when they suffered some sort of medical distress, said Beverly Begay, chief investigator of the medical examiner's office. None of the deaths occurred during the storm itself, she said.

The office completed its grim inventory Tuesday and announced the results after identifying all of the dead and notifying their families. The fatalities linked to Rita do not include the 23 Bellaire nursing-home residents who died when their bus caught fire Friday in Dallas County

"Considering around 2.8 million people evacuated within a short amount of time, this is a relatively small, small number," Begay said.

"I was devastated, the way I lost my mother," David Chiles, 56, said Tuesday. "We did as the city officials told us to do, but it cost my mother's life, and you cannot bring her back."

The dead ranged in age from 14 months to 92 years. Though the deaths occurred over six days, about a third of the victims died Thursday when the evacuation crush was at its peak, clogging major Houston-area highways.

Nineteen of the 31 victims died or became ill while they were inside vehicles, and seven of the deaths were thought to be potentially heat-related, Begay said. Some had body temperatures ranging from 105 to 112 degrees, the report shows.

Another common theme among the victims was their medical histories. The majority were critically ill or faced some chronic illness that could lead to death, Begay said.

The victims included nursing-home evacuees and a woman who collapsed in a parking lot while waiting for gasoline. Another woman died in a house fire during a power outage.

Exactly how the deaths were connected to Rita was unclear in some cases. For others, the connection was easier to discern. For example, Robbie Johnson, 73, of Texas City, had a body temperature of 112 degrees when she was found unconscious Thursday in her car in the 32100 block of Hempstead Highway..

"We've got to learn from this experience and do a better job next time putting in place an evacuation plan that takes into account the needs of vulnerable populations," she added.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said he is saddened by the number of deaths, but he is not particularly surprised.

"If the evacuation itself contributed to that, I would be saddened and wanting to find ways to avoid a similar situation in the future," Eckels said. "We need to look at the bottlenecks and congestion ... so we don't wind up having folks caught in gridlock while trying to leave evacuation zones."

Eckels said he would have encouraged all the victims to leave Houston anyway because of their medical histories and health needs.

Houston Mayor Bill White was not available for comment Tuesday night. But a spokesman for his office said the evacuation was a necessity and was intended to save lives.

"I don't think anyone would argue we should leave people in nursing homes in those areas that are in the path of an anticipated storm," mayoral spokesman Frank Michel said.

But Chiles' son said he would not have tried to evacuate his elderly mother had he known about the traffic conditions that would eventually ensnare them on U.S. 290.

"Naturally, we wouldn't have evacuated," he said.

"We would've ridden it out. But they kept telling everybody, 'Get out, get out, it's going to be another Katrina, a massive storm,' " said David Chiles, who said he had cared for his mother for the past 23 years in her old but sturdy home in Oak Forest.

Some families learned of their loved ones' deaths only Tuesday. One was Ralph Olan Hood Jr., 56, who went to a Friendswood nursing home looking for his mother, Jessie Hood, 91, who was evacuated from there last week.

"It wasn't anybody's fault," he said. "I think with the exception of not having enough gasoline on hand that they did do a good job. I don't know if I would have called for a mass evacuation, but I'm glad more people weren't killed. Her heart just basically gave."